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If an upper limit is ageist, then so is a lower limit. But you wouldn't think that having a 14 yo in office is a prudent thing. You probably never balked at the 30 yo limit for senate.
Those are very different things, though. I'd be okay with lowering the age limit for things, depending on the age we are talking about. Definitely would want people past the PFC stage (around 25).
They're not different things though. The only difference between one arbitrarily established limit and the other is that you think it's okay to shit on younger people.
They're both extremely arbitrary limits based on some expectation that a 29yo is unable to be a reasoning, empathic human being but a 30yo can. It's not even based on medical science. It's based on a cultural belief that old people are somehow wiser and more experienced.
Oh, and since you brought up the development of the prefrontal cortex, the human brain begins to show signs of deterioration as early as the thirties. with cognitive declines related to aging becoming pronounced and obvious around the sixties. so fuck off with that.
a kind, empathetic and compassionate 20 year old is going to be a better congress person than a 50 year old whose not.
Oh, and by the way, a person born in 1945... half of their experience predates the modern world, and the quality of one's experience is far more important than the extent of that experience. (for reference, such a person would be 80 years today, and would have been 46 when the first webpage went live. they would have been 58 when MySpace went live.)
the majority of their experience applies to a world that no longer exists. In every way relevant to modern governance, their preconceptions and understanding of the world is- generally- a world that is gone.
This is why so many of them believe that young families can afford a house on a single income if they just went and got a fucking job. Because they could and did.
There are exceptions to this, so don't even bother listing them. I don't care. Because any hard limit you set is not going to fucking care. and all of that brings us back to... both limits are either aegist, or not aegist.
I don't care if it is aegist. There's good reasons to have both limitations.
And lets be clear, you're worried about a 24 yo going off and starting a war because their brain is underdeveloped, but ignoring that a person with dementia is a paranoid fucker, and makes that 24yo look positively saintly.
Whoa. I think there is some amount of wisdom and experience people acquire and giving them until 25 to get that PFC thing going makes some sense.
I also said elsewhere in this thread that I think cognitive tests would be reasonable.
I don't think lower age limits and upper age limits are the same thing at all. I suppose if people want to put it to voters, people could work on updating the Constitution to lower age limits to 20 or whatever for Senate, House and the WH and then let voters decide. I just don't think it's the main concern (or even a real concern at all) when it comes to our broken system, although I know it's quite fashionable to blame older people for all the problems...I'd say the problem is making money = free speech and allowing legal bribery.
Having younger people being bribed vs. older people and having term limits on those younger people is supposedly going to accomplish something, but I'm not really sure what.
age has nothing to do with being bribed. that's a distraction.
As for wisdom, age has little to do with that, too.
do you really want me to list all the fucking stupid, unwise, and vile policies being pushed by mostly-old-people, who've stopped giving a fuck about their legacy because they already got theirs and pulled the ladder up?
Edit: Again: the only functional difference is that you think it’s appropriate to shit on younger people. That’s it. Every medical justification you use to do so… can be applied to anyone over 30, and especially anyone over 60. Any justification about “experience” can be ignored since most of that doesn’t even apply to the modern world.
You act as if they would suddenly lose representation. Which is not true any more than anyone under 30 is not already represented.
There is no legitimate argument you can make that justifies one but not the other. None.